When you ride...

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Come on Rusty -- in a large, large percentage of the country (especially in the 'burbs of major cities, which of course is precisely where the largest number of people seeking horse boarding ARE), there ARE NO PROPERTIES that large, let alone ones that operate boarding barns, let alone ones that operate boarding barns with safe facilities and good care and cost less than $800/month.

Actually, thinking about boarding barns right around here, which is fairly rural and open, and has a lot of people with A Good Bit Of Money who commute to the city, I do not believe there are more than maybe half a dozen boarding barns with more than 100 acres (although there are a few others that have less, but abut large tracts of crown land with lots of riding trails at least if you don't mind hordes of bicyclists zooming up your horse's butt)... whereas I would guess that within 15 minutes of me there are probably maybe 3-4 dozen boarding barns with 20-100 acres. Some of which offer quite good conditions for the horses (safe fences, lengthy or 24/7 turnout with good sheds, turnout paddocks up to 10-20 acres for 3-6 horses in some cases, with good healthy grass growth all season, intelligent horse-handling, good hay and reliable feeding, etc) and pretty decent riding situations.

I had NO idea people were trying to keep horses in facilities of the sorts you describe.

I find that hard to believe, especially if you have lived in California, for heaven's sake. There are an INSANE number of horses kept there with essentially no turnout at all -- just 24/7 life in "large" pens that are like 10x20 or sometimes larger -- and not necessarily much in the way of actual trails or "fields" to ride in, either.

I personally would give up my horses before I'd torture them the way you are describing here! That is NO way to keep a horse. It is--IMHO--no different than forcing a big, active breed of dog to live in a walk-up studio apartment in some huge city. It's inhumane. True horsemen do NOT keep an animal this way, not even temporarily. You ALWAYS do what is best for the horse. And the conditions you describe are certainly not what is best for the horse.

What on EARTH are you talking about????????????

No 'descriptions' have actually been offered, other than "lack of trail access" and "turnout in areas less than a few acres".

If it is "inhumane" not to trail-ride and not to have hundred-acre perpetually-verdant pastures, then I would venture to guess that about 90% or more of horses in America are being "tortured".

Indeed there are a bunch of places where I *would* be entirely unwilling to keep a horse, up to the point of selling the horse if I could not secure better accommodations -- including the types of places that welsummerchicks describes in her post above. However I am flabbergasted at the idea of defining something like merely "lack of trail access" or "two horses in a small paddock" as "inhumane torture". And quite frankly I find it impossible to believe that you can possibly, given the amount of horse-industry experience you always claim, be UNAWARE that either sort of places exist.

Good grief! Enough grandstanding. And if any of this is meant to imply that you think the original poster is morally bereft for keeping her horse in a barn without trail access, a large ring, or many hundreds of acres of fields, which it sure SEEMS to imply, well, it must be nice to be psychic and know all the OTHER relevant things about the place, and know somehow what all the o.p.'s other alternatives are.


Pat​

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

Sorry, Pat. I was responding to Welsummer's post and I should have said so. I was NOT talking to/about RePo. And, okay, I have not been in California in about 10-12 years. But at that time I kept 4--including 2 stallions--at a small facility that offered a decent arena, regular daily INDIVIDUAL turnouts, and access to good trails. Yes, I paid almost my entire salary to do it. The alternative was to send them back to Florida (which is what I did during the Gulf War, BTW) where they had access to 50-acre pastures for the mares as part of the farm's band of broodmares AND individual turnouts for my stallions, but those folks also stood my stallions for the season I was gone. They also took them every other time I was deployed.

Sadly those days are gone. I am retired and the horse business has gone in a direction I do not understand. I now keep only one stallion and I do not offer him at public stud. I have a couple of old mares, a young crippled mare, and soon a mare from the TAMU research herd. My direction and my goals have changed.

Nonetheless, from the time I was 18 until I retired a few years back, I was actively keeping and showing in cutting and sometimes reining across the southern half of the country. And no, I was no big deal but I sure did enjoy it! But if the only conditions available to me then were the kind being described by Welsummer's post, I'd have quit a long time ago.

I took at it this way: I have always secretly wanted my own buffalo. However, I KNOW there is no way I could possibly offer the kind of facilities that buffalo would need to prosper and have a decent life. So the buffalo remains a silly dream. It sounds to me that if what welsummer is saying is at all accurate, then people with dreams about horses are subjecting those horses to "lives of quiet desperation" just so they can have their own dream. To me that is pure selfishness. I do not understand that. How can a person care more about a dream than about a living, breathing life?!? Which is why I am trying to quit this thread. I only posted this because I wanted to be sure that RePo understood that I was not criticizing or putting her down IN ANY WAY. Good grief! I was TRYING to be helpful! Obviously that is not the way it came out, so I am walking away quietly and really NOT trying to make trouble here.

I am an old man and apparently quite out of step with the times now.


Rusty

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Quote:
No...you're not out of step with the times. There are several barns that only have bare pens and 5 horses to a 10x20 pen. To me, that is not fair at all to the horse, but people do it just to say "I have a horse!"

I found a place that I could afford, that had knowledgeable people to help me (because Lord knows I need help), but it's more of a pasture lease than a boarding facility. The pasture did have 7 horses in it. Only one horse was constantly showing up with bite marks, hoof prints, cuts and scrapes. This was the only horse that showed up that way...ironically, it was the only horse that instigated fights. It has since been sold...pretty palomino gelding. I doubt they got more than $300 for it. (I couldn't even get it to walk next to me with the halter one and this horse was at least 5 years old.)

Anyway, I think a horse needs a pasture to relax, but trails aren't a necessity to me as I haven't yet learned how to trail ride. Plus...my saddle isn't THE most comfortable thing in the world.

I didn't take offense to anything Rusty. I know I am a very green person, with a little bit more than green broke gelding. When there's a connection, there's a connection.

The pasture he's in is not very large, maybe 15 acres total. I do not trust the other horses in the paddock to not run up on us in the pasture. In fact, I know they would run us all over the place. His pasture mates would more "butt" him than bite him. They like to head butt his flanks. I don't know why...really couldn't tell you.

 

[welsummerchicks]

Maybe not so much out of step with the times because turnout and grazing on huge pastures is a peculiarity of only a few places in the US (and even rarer in the rest of the world) and has been for a very, very long time. Limited circumstances work out fine as long as the horse is a laid back type and gets the exercise, attention, routine, consistency, nutrition he needs.

I had the financial means to keep my horses at the best places available, we weren't at any limited place for more than a few weeks. I have my preferences of how to keep horses, but I've also seen over many years when we briefly had to make do, that the horses are usually a lot more adaptable than their owners.

Our rigid ideas about turnout are a peculiar remnant of the way America was farmed and the spacious land use we have enjoyed for a long time. Even though that no longer exists in most parts of the country, many of us, we still have that idea in our heads.

I think horses are usually a lot more flexible and adaptable than their owners...horses can do well in a limited situation if they have the attention, consistency, routine, quality feed and attention and exercise. Studies of stress hormones in horses have basically disproved almost every one of our assumptions about what stresses horses and what sort of life is 'best' for them. For example in one study of stress it was actually the top dressage and show jumpers, 'stalled up' and with the 'high pressure, hard, unnatural job' that had the LOWER stress hormone levels.